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Healthy Snack – Spicy Roasted Chickpeas

I’m trying to be good and eat better for the New Year. Really, I am. But I got so many nice foodie treats for Christmas and my birthday – what ya gonna do?! My theory is, eat them, get them out of the house, then start a fresh.

I don’t know about you guys, but my downfall is snacking in the evening. I’ll have my dinner, I’ll be full. I won’t need anymore food. But I’ve got into this awful habit of snacking. On anything and everything. Some nights it’ll be sweets and chocolate, some nights it’ll be savoury. I was searching t’tinterweb for ideas for something healthy to snack on and I came up with this – spicy roasted chickpeas.

Savoury, spicy and crunchy. Let’s be honest, they’re not going to beat a nice big bag of Walkers Sensations, but they taste damn good, take two seconds to throw together and will satisfy your snacking habits. Also, I always have a spare can or two of chickpeas in the cupboard (I find them a bit like cans of chopped tomatoes – I use them up and don’t remember buying anymore but they just seem to multiply and re-appear!). This is great because it means if I’m feeling fanciful I can whip a batch up and snack away!

You can eat these as they are, or try adding a handful to your salad to make it a bit more interesting and add texture. The great thing about this recipe is that you can really mix things up. Using the same quantities, you can substitute whatever spices you have in your spice rack. I’ve even seen a cinnamon sugar version! Maybe it defeats the object of healthy… But it tastes nice 🙂

Ingredients

1 400g can chickpeas, drained

1 tbsp oil, eg vegetable, sunflower – whatever you have in

1 tsp chilli powder

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp paprika

Method

— Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Drain your chickpeas, rinse thoroughly with cold water and dry using a paper or kitchen towel. Try to make them as dry as possible. The dryer they are, the crunchier they’ll become.

— Once dry, pour them into a bowl and add the oil and spices, until everything is well coated. Tip out onto a baking tray. Ensure that the chickpeas are spread out in one layer so that they have room to roast properly.

— Roast in the oven for 30 minutes, taking the tray out at ten minute intervals to shake, to make sure they are evenly baked.

— Once the 30 minutes is up, turn the oven off, open the door slightly and leave the the tray in the oven to cool.

Once cooled, help yourself! Be warned – they don’t last very long.

Have you tried these? What flavour combinations would you like to try?